Archive for September, 2014

‘Pitt’s [Seven Years ] war strategy set the pattern of colonisation for the next one hundred years’. Vanessa Collingridge, Captain Cook, Ebury Press, 2003.

1788 – Australia: Britain’s invasion of New Holland, now Australia, must be seen in context of the Elder Pitt’s ‘war strategy’. In reality ‘one hundred years’ of war and conquest 1763 – 1868.

‘The decision to colonise New South Wales cannot be isolated from the strategic imperatives of the world’s first truly global struggle, the Seven Years’ War (1757-63)’. Jeffrey Grey, A Military History of Australia, Third Ed. Cambridge University Press, 2008

The North American theatre of the Seven Years’ War (1756 – 1763) saw Lieutenant James Cook RN distinguish himself as a talented mathematician, a brave navigator and exceptional map-maker.

‘It was on that expedition that Cook first learned from a British army officer [ Samuel Holland] how to make maps….He mastered the technique of translating the three [3 ] dimensions of landmarks, shores, rocks and shoals precisely and exactly onto two [2] dimensional charts’. Arthur Herman, To Rule The Waves, Hodder and Stoughton, 2005

1790 – 12 December, Head quarters Sydney: ‘The governor pitched upon me [Tench] to execute the…command…those natives who reside near the head of Botany Bay….put ten [10] to death…bring in the heads of the slain [and] two [2] prisoners to execute in the most most public and exemplary manner’. His Excellency Governor Arthur Phillip Orders to Marine Captain Watkin Tench, Sydney’s First Four Years, ed. F.L Fitzhardinge, Angus and Robertson, 1961

Can we know what drove Governor Arthur Phillip’s ferocity? Yes we can – SIMMERING REBELLION WITHIN MILITARY RANKS

See: An Ugly War: Britain Versus The Other

‘Phillip was authorised to see to the defence of the colony’. Professor Bruce Kercher, An Unruly Child, History of Law in Australia, Allen and Unwin, 1998